1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to communication systems and more particularly to coordinating access to a shared medium by multiple protocols of one or more communication systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Communication systems are known to support wireless and wire lined communications between wireless and/or wire lined communication devices. Such communication systems range from national and/or international cellular telephone systems to the Internet to point-to-point in-home wireless networks. Each type of communication system is constructed, and hence operates, in accordance with one or more communication standards. For instance, wireless communication systems may operate in accordance with one or more standards including, but not limited to, IEEE 802.11, Bluetooth, advanced mobile phone services (AMPS), digital AMPS, global system for mobile communications (GSM), code division multiple access (CDMA), local multi-point distribution systems (LMDS), multi-channel-multi-point distribution systems (MMDS), and/or variations thereof.
Depending on the type of wireless communication system, a wireless communication device, such as a cellular telephone, two-way radio, personal digital assistant (PDA), personal computer (PC), laptop computer, home entertainment equipment, et cetera communicates directly or indirectly with other wireless communication devices. For direct communications (also known as point-to-point communications), the participating wireless communication devices tune their receivers and transmitters to the same channel or channels (e.g., one of the plurality of radio frequency (RF) carriers of the wireless communication system) and communicate over that channel(s). For indirect wireless communications, each wireless communication device communicates directly with an associated base station (e.g., for cellular services) and/or an associated access point (e.g., for an in-home or in-building wireless network) via an assigned channel. To complete a communication connection between the wireless communication devices, the associated base stations and/or associated access points communicate with each other directly, via a system controller, via the public switch telephone network, via the Internet, and/or via some other wide area network.
For each wireless communication device to participate in wireless communications, it includes a built-in radio transceiver (i.e., receiver and transmitter) or is coupled to an associated radio transceiver (e.g., a station for in-home and/or in-building wireless communication networks, RF modem, etc.). As is known, the receiver is coupled to the antenna and includes a low noise amplifier, one or more intermediate frequency stages, a filtering stage, and a data recovery stage. The low noise amplifier receives inbound RF signals via the antenna and amplifies then. The one or more intermediate frequency stages mix the amplified RF signals with one or more local oscillations to convert the amplified RF signal into baseband signals or intermediate frequency (IF) signals. The filtering stage filters the baseband signals or the IF signals to attenuate unwanted out of band signals to produce filtered signals. The data recovery stage recovers raw data from the filtered signals in accordance with the particular wireless communication standard.
As is also known, the transmitter includes a data modulation stage, one or more intermediate frequency stages, and a power amplifier. The data modulation stage converts raw data into baseband signals in accordance with a particular wireless communication standard. The one or more intermediate frequency stages mix the baseband signals with one or more local oscillations to produce RF signals. The power amplifier amplifies the RF signals prior to transmission via an antenna.
For both wireless and wireline communication systems, there are many standards that provide protocols as to how audio, text, video, data, and/or any other type information is to be conveyed within the system. Communication devices that are designed to be compliant with a particular standard (e.g., Ethernet 10Base-T, IEEE 802.11b, Bluetooth) are able to communication with any other communication device within the communication system that is compliant with the same standard. For example, wireless communication devices that are compliant with IEEE 802.11b can communicate with each other, provided they are properly registered to the same communication system.
As is known, differing standards sometimes use the same communication medium (e.g., allocated radio frequency spectrum, wired connections, etc.) due to a finite amount of communication medium. For example, both Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b use the 2.4 GHz spectrum. As long as communication systems that are compliant with differing standards that share a communication medium do not physically overlap, the systems operate without interference from each other. However, if the communication systems do physically overlap, they will interfere with each other, degrading the performance of both systems. For example, if a Bluetooth pico net physically overlaps with an IEEE 802.11b local area network, simultaneous use of the 2.4 GHz spectrum will cause interference that will most likely cause both transmissions to fail.
To help reduce this problem, communication devices have been developed to be compliant with multiple standards that have different protocols for a shared communication medium. For example, wireless communication devices have been developed that are compliant with both Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11(a), (b), and/or (g). In such devices, the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer of one protocol communicates with the MAC layer of another protocol to avoid simultaneous use of the shared communication medium.
While this substantially reduces simultaneous use of a shared communication medium on a device-by-device basis, it does little to reduce simultaneous use on a communication system level. For example, if a first communication device desires to use the shared communication medium in accordance with a first protocol, it will block its use of a second protocol for the duration of the use per the first protocol, however, a second communication device may concurrently desire to use the shared communication medium in accordance with the second protocol. Since the protocols are different, the first device will obtain access of the shared communication medium in accordance with the first protocol and the second device will obtain access of the shared communication medium in accordance with the second protocol. With both devices concurrently accessing the shared communication medium, their transmissions will interfere with each other, causing at least one of the transmissions to fail.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for coordinating multiple protocols using a shared communication medium.